Are there some sucessfull pro-natality economic policies?

Question

Many people are warning against demographic decline in the Europe and USA. Is there any evidence that economic policies or subsidies can help increase birth rates?

Answer 1

There aren't many successful economic stories in this area. According to the Institute for Family Studies, Polish program that offered tax incentives to parents had some limited success but similar program implemented in Hungary did not worked as well.

There is evidence that generous maternity leave can somewhat help to increase birth rates. You can read about that in; Risse, L. (2006). Does maternity leave encourage higher birth rates?: an analysis of the australian labour force. Australian Journal of Labour Economics, 9(4), 343-370.

Answer 2

The evidence is quite mixed, it looks like in different countries similar policies have different effect. For example, Cohen et al 2008 found that even relatively modest subsidy significantly boosted fertility rates in Israel.

However, similar subsidies had much smaller effect in Canada where it was estimated that, in case of cash subsidy, it would took about \$220k to induce additional birth on average (Ang 2015).

Parental leave seems to be something that works across the various cultures. In Canada it also lead to significant increase in birth at relatively low cost (Ang 2015).

The Netherlands, is one of the few developed countries that has replacement rate births and it is argued that this is, among other things, also due to normalization of part time work (Mills, 2015). Here in the Netherlands it is normal for parents to shift to part time work (3 days a week) once they have children. This is thanks to policies that do encourage or at least do not discourage part-time work. Netherlands, also has child allowance and generous parental leave that are also significantly contributing to this. Other factors tend to be non-economic.